• Infrastructure Department boosts the public realm

    Jersey City is showing how to rapidly transform public space to serve a wide range of users, contributing to its reputation as a livable city.
    Two years ago, the City of Jersey City created a Department of Infrastructure to oversee streets, transit, parks, municipal buildings, and other facilities—an unusual and bold move helping transform the public realm. The department and policies leading up to its creation were pivotal in...Read more

  • Lessons from ‘car-free’ Culdesac

    Nationally recognized Culdesac Tempe is living up to its hype—the question is to what extent cities will get out of the way to allow this to happen elsewhere.
    Phase 1 of Culdesac Tempe has been occupied for a year and a half, with phase 2 under construction. This closely watched 15-acre project on the Valley Metro light rail line indicates that car-free living is economically, socially, and environmentally viable, even in the heart of car culture—the...Read more

  • Public housing transformation promotes urbanism

    Founded on a solid design framework, the North Downtown Athens plan extends the city's heart with mixed-use, walkable, affordable development.
    Nearly 30 years ago, new urbanists established design standards for HUD’s HOPE VI program, the largest remake of public housing in the nation’s history. Although HOPE VI wasn’t perfect, the design principles have endured. The program also showed that the nascent New Urbanism was not just for the...Read more

  • Four steps to affordable housing

    Urbanists must use the fundamentals of construction to build affordably in an age of soaring housing costs and interest rates and avoid “cheap-washing.”
    Four steps lead to building affordable housing outside of pure subsidy, Fernando Pages Ruiz argues. These are: Design for affordability Collaborate towards affordability Build affordably Use new land strategies that are becoming more available to cut land costs Fernando, who presented to CNU’s On...Read more